Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Handbook: Production and

PREFACE
This Handbook of Manufacturing Techniques focuses on a new aspect of the drug
development challenge: producing and administering the physical drug products
that we hope are going to provide valuable new pharmacotherapeutic tools in medicine.
These 34 chapters cover the full range of approaches to developing and producing
new formulations and new approaches to drug delivery. Also addressed are
approaches to the issues of producing and packaging these drug products (that is,
formulations). The area where the most progress is possible in improving therapeutic
success with new drugs is that of better delivery of active drug molecules to the
therapeutic target tissue. In this volume, we explore current and new approaches to
just this issue across the full range of routes (oral, parenteral, topical, anal, nasal,
aerosol. ocular, vaginal, and transdermal) using all sorts of forms of formulation.
The current metrics for success of new drugs in development once they enter the
clinic (estimated at ranging from as low as 2% for oncology drugs to as high as 10%
for oral drugs) can likely be leveraged in the desired direction most readily by
improvements in this area of drug delivery.
The Handbook of Manufacturing Techniques seeks to cover the entire range of
available approaches to getting a pure drug (as opposed to a combination product)
into the body and to its therapeutic tissue target. Thanks to the persistent efforts of
Michael Leventhal, these 34 chapters, which are written by leading practitioners in
each of these areas, provide coverage of the primary approaches to these fundamental
problems that stand in the way of so many potentially successful pharmacotherapeutic
interventions.
xiii